Death in the Tall Grass

Cresting the hill, big Dodge engine running like a hound, a heart drum of blown muffler hurrying me onward when I see the sign. At the artilleryman’s crest, just before you can see over the hill, is the marker: Yellow and square, turned onto a corner, “Accident Ahead”.
I slow making the crest and rolling the wheel into the declining turn, and see the glut of disorder that marks an accident scene. Emergency response vehicles strewn across the road at cubist abstract angles, uniforms and bunker gear hurtling around masking the people inside them. A black uniform yells at yellow bunker gear, and we all get directed onto the shoulder. Parked, waiting.
It is in this stillness that I really see it, the maroon van off the shoulder of the road, down the slight slope and through the barbed wire fence. It sits on all four wheels, perfectly inline with the fence, someone could have parked it there except for the obvious. All the glass is gone, save the windshield which is shattered, a crystalline spiderweb narrowing in focus to the solid white knot of a million sand-grain fractures where the drivers head hit. The drivers side of the van is crushed inwards, the surface metal twisted into figures and forms challenging the imagination. The drivers door is covered with a yellow plastic and foam emergency blanket, held on by duct-tape. The blanket moves gently in the breeze, dancing with the tall grasses surrounding the van, its bright color highlighting more than hiding the nature below.
It is quiet as I stare at the van. It sits alone, ten yards from any police or emergency vehicle, ten yards from any living humanity, perfectly lined up with the fence and pointed up the hill. There is no illusion that it might start moving again though, its stillness and quietude are of something much older, much more final, something that is now part of the earth and grasses.
The uniform and bunker-gear shatter the stillness, waving us on and ordering us to stay on the shoulder. Further down the hill, further into the curve, other uniforms are picking up pieces, measuring distances, and speaking loudly and irreverently of the materiel of the dead. Beyond them, just off the shoulder, is another vehicle. Small, black, a pickup before the top of the cab was crushed down into the seats, and folded back into the bed. It is surrounded by activity, and we’re rolling now, hitting the road again – Chaos rarely sees itself in the maelstrom.
As I drive, picking up speed, passing the van ahead of me as it struggles to regain sixty-five, my thoughts return to stillness and death, the order of it all. How natural it seems, death in the tall whispering grasses. And, isn’t it?

A Warrior Falls

Like every day before, the officer wasn't late for duty. He sat in the Squad room, paying attention when he needed to, joking with his fellows when he didn't. He climbed into the seat of the car, and settled in for the morning patrol.
Sometime after breakfast, (coffee and a McMuffin for his partner, just a McMuffin for him,) and before lunch (he will wonder, later and only once, if it might have been good), the call comes in. Man with a gun, wife and children in the house. His partner flips an otherwise illegal U-turn he calls flipping a bitch, and puts the V8 Interceptor to work.
The scene is the chaos that finds its home in the heart of every warrior, its meaning and pattern apparent only in his mind. Shots are fired out the window. Tear gas is fired back in. The wife and kids come out. The gunman doesn't. The officer wonders how people can be so cruel to one another at times, doing that to their women, and their little ones. He thinks maybe he'd like to have a pup or two of his own someday, but doesn't have time for deeper contemplation. They're lining up, going in, he's got to go - All thoughts are on the door, the monster behind it, the monster with the gun.
They put flash-bangs through the windows as the great big man in-front slams the backdoor into a thousand splinters, a million motes of dust - Each one lit up for an instant by the flash of the 'bangs.
They're in, dust and smoke clouding the already hazy unlit room. The gunfire comes from within that haze, muzzle flashes - A cheap nine-millimeter, something that any other time might not have even fired. Call it fate, call it irony, call it tragedy, call it life. Gunfire in response, the solider, more reliable, fire of forty-five's and five-point-five-sixes, all well made, well maintained, as ready for action as he. But he's not acting anymore, he doesn't hear the return gunfire - One round, just the wrong side of the edge on his vest, has torn through flesh and bone and gone deep inside.
The Earth trembles when he falls.
He hurts when he breathes, but knows he must keep trying. He doesn't know where his partner is. Where the bad man is. He fights - To breath, to be loyal, to serve. It hurts, deep inside where it hasn't hurt since his heart broke once, when he was young, the last time he saw his mother.
His partner is there then, looking down at him, saying soft, soothing things, calling him "buddy". He likes it when his partner does that. The bad man is there too, but he's not standing up, or fighting. The officer relaxes a little now, but its still so hard to breathe and he has to breathe to make sure there are no more badmen.
His vision falters, he's going to sleep. Somewhere out in the growing blackness what might be a green field, and old friends, are visible. He blinks. The dust is settling in the room, but its all light and shadow.
They take his vest off, he feels them placing something over the wound. A needle sticks him between the ribs. Its easier to breathe now, but he's still so tired. He cant fight sleep anymore. He hears his friends calling him into the soft grass of the field.

I see him as they bring him out of the ambulance. One paramedic just picks him up off the gurney, and steps out into the harsh midday light. His blood runs down the front of the 'medics white uniform shirt, but that's okay. He's one of them, a compatriot, a force against the destruction they all feel chasing them - Chasing the world - a brother, a Warrior.
The other paramedic is holding the door open. Right of the door there is wall of his fellow warriors folding in behind the one carrying him as they go through the door. Tears are in their eyes. I can feel the reverberations in the Earth now, as I see them disappear within, and the Veterinary clinic doors close behind them.

Sweat and Dust

She was a silhouette at first, black jeans and tank top. Surrounded by sawdust. The golden light realized then, into sun-bronzed skin and straw colored hair. Sweat glistened on her muscles, hiding in shadow then rising as she worked.
The sander ate at the top of the sign, shaving splintered pine and throwing it up into the air around her. Sawdust stuck to her sweat.
Strong shoulders bunching and extending, push, pull, coil, uncoil, Braced, legs apart, pushing into the sander from the knees, up rigid thighs, through firm shapely hips.
Sweat sticking black fabric to her firm and narrowed middle, half up in the back. Sweat glistening in the hollow of her spine. It runs off her shoulders and collar bones too, like sap. Liquid amber of the sun itself, reflecting light off her yellow hair as it descends into shadowed hollows beneath the neck line, a vain attempt at carrying the sunsets dying idolatry into another glorious resting.

Rainy Louisville Day

I remember a time, three years (give or take a couple months) ago, when I made a journey to Indiana by bus, to see someone. In the name of love.
It was an interesting trip. But it was long, and involved a great losing of luggage. I remember arriving in Louisville tired, having to piss like a son of a bitch, and annoyed that my luggage was... well, somewhere most definately not Louisville.
Then I saw her.
It was the first time, up close, after a year of late night phonecalls and long letters.
And it wasnt like the movies.
I was tired. I was worried what her parents would think of me, and was looking for them over her shoulder before I looked into her eyes. I gave her a quick hug, one arm because I didnt know how much was too much for her folks, then shook hands with her parents, explained my luggage situation and asked politely if it would be too much trouble to stop at a Wal-Mart someplace so I could get a few things.
Thats pretty much how the week went. Well, I came down with a nasty cold, and she was fighting through one. But it never really lived up to expectations. We didnt "click". Too much nerves, too much tired, and in the end, too much difference.
And then I went home, on a rainy Louisville day. Looking out the bus windows, waving as she watched me leave.

Fire on the Mountain, and its Raining

I stood in the yard, looking east at the Sierra Ladrones (Thieves Mountain) that rise to 8'000 feet some ten miles from my home. A large canyon down the west slope was awash with flame, hot sports flaring up into the darkness like distressed signal beacons. Ocassionally the flare of headlights or taillights as the Bureau of Land Management fire crews moved up and down the line, herding their beast where they wanted it long into the night.
This morning, under grey skies, the columns of smoke rose from lower down the western slope as they moved operations down to the foothills, burning a few miles of slash. They've been doing controlled burns since day before yesterday.
Rain clouds built in the south west all day, and have come rolling and thundering in to sit above the dry country with a few teasing droplets of rain.
And the country does look dry, it seems as though fall just fell over everything in the last few days. The grasses have turned yellow again, and the leaves on the tree's around the stock pond have begun their change as well.
Driving to work I saw four bucks standing beside the road. At first I just saw one, and as I looked he ran and became four. Its amazing how they can melt out of the trees like that, you focus on one and the rest just fall into your vision.

The equinox has come - I hope it is a good fall.